I am a graphic designer/web designer, and I’ve just had an epiphany: use Scrivener as a way to manage my Wordpress web design projects! It’s the perfect tool for organizing the billion pieces that go into designing a website.
With a cartoon lightbulb floating over my head, I went to work setting up a Web Design template, which contains the basic things I use for every design project:
Job Details
-Quote (copy of approved quote so I can easily refer back to the job scope)
-Client contact info, who’s in charge of approvals, who’s in charge of paying the bills)
Meeting Notes
Each time I have a meeting or exchange with a client via email, it goes in here.
Our Process
(description of each stage of the design and development process, so that I have it all in front of me when I’m meeting with a client)
Design Brief
Each question on the design brief is its own scrivening so that I can go down the list of questions when I’m interviewing a client. my Design Brief includes these main sections:
- Goals
- Company Info
- Audience
- Product or Service
- Competition (with web archives of their sites stored right in Scrivener)
- Mood and Tone
- Budget
- Timing
- Deliverables
- Search Engine Optimization
Supporting Documents
- wireframe (made in Fireworks, dragged in here for reference)
- Mood Board (also made in Fireworks)
- Mockups (Fireworks)
- Logo (vector format and web format)
- Images to use on site
- Link to Google Docs (if client and I are using that to track our site progress)
Hosting Info
Domain registration info, Login info, FTP info, Cpanel login info, Wordpress login info, database settings, etc. - each in its own scrivening
Social Media
All the client’s social media logins and info
Web Code and Snippets
- all the custom code for .php, .css and widgets used on the site, so that I have it for easy referral. Each time a piece of code changes, I create a new scrivening with a new date, so that I have a trail of the various tweaks I’ve done. Also very useful if something blows up.
- font stacks
Wordpress info and Plugins
- A listing of all the Wordpress plugins and versions I’m using (My theme of choice, Headway, makes it very easy to copy this info in a list format)
Web Archive of Existing Site
If this is a site redesign (not a brand new design) then I drag each page in here as its own web archive. It’s an easy way for me to refer back to the way their old site was. (By the way, I was thrilled when I discovered that dragging the URL from the address bar pulls everything from that page into Scrivener as a self-contained web archive.)
Site Map of New Site
Each page gets its own scrivening, nested in the order it will be on the site. I use the “status” label and some custom meta-data to keep track of to-do items on each page. The outline view is very handy for this. I fill in the content for each page here. (Note: I am not bothering to use any HTML; only the most basic Header and Body text. I do all my styling in Wordpress.)
I’m still tweaking my Web Design template as I go, but I’m extremely excited about how well suited Scrivener is to large multi-part projects like web design. From initial meeting to final delivery, it’s a great way to keep all my planning, files, coding and changes all in one place.
As a point of reference, the way I used to do web design planning was:
- Use Evernote as a catch-all for my meeting notes, login information, screengrabs, and other miscellany
- In the Finder, Keep all the files for the project in an ever-growing, ever-messier set of folders (most stuff ended up in a folder called “Art in Progress”)
- Work in Wordpress on a local installation most of the time, organizing, modifying, and tweaking from there. It was often hard to get a handle of which pages and items still needed tweaking, so for that I used:
- Pagico Project Planner, to keep a running list of independent tasks I still needed to do.
I am just starting a large e-commerce site redesign using Scrivener, and I’m really excited with it so far. I feel like it’s going to make my job so much easier!
I’m also going to create some more custom templates for other typical things that we designers do: Identity Design, Product Design, etc.
THANK YOU, GENIUS SCRIVENER DEVELOPERS!